http://www.e-reading.org.ua/bookreader.php/80261/King_-_The_Stand.html
Stephen King
The Stand - The Complete & Uncut Edition [ RACKETEER INFLUENCED AND CORRUPT ORGANIZATIONS US Title 18 ]
Rage struck him with all the unexpectedness of a sweet surprise. He was up, and then he had hold of Deitz’s lapels, and he was shaking him back and forth. From the corner of his eye he saw startled movement behind the double-paned glass. Dimly, muffled by distance and soundproofed walls, he heard a hooter go off.
“What did you people do?” he shouted. “What did you do? What in Christ’s name did you do?”
“Mr. Redman—”
“Huh? What the fuck did you people do?”
The door hissed open. Three large men in olive-drab uniforms stepped in. They were all wearing nose-filters.
Deitz looked over at them and snapped, “Get the hell out of here!”
The three men looked uncertain.
“Our orders—”
“Get out of here and that’s an order!”
They retreated. Deitz sat calmly on the bed. His lapels were rumpled and his hair had tumbled over his forehead. That was all. He was looking at Stu calmly, even compassionately. For a wild moment Stu considered ripping his nose-filter out, and then he remembered Geraldo, what a stupid name for a guinea pig. Dull despair struck him like cold water. He sat down.
“Christ in a sidecar,” he muttered.
“Listen to me,” Deitz said. “I’m not responsible for you being here. Neither is Denninger, or the nurses who come in to take your blood pressure. If there was a responsible party it was Campion, but you can’t lay it all on him, either. He ran, but under the circumstances, you or I might have run, too. It was a technical slipup that allowed him to run. The situation exists. We are trying to cope with it, all of us. But that doesn’t make us responsible.”
“Then who is?”
“Nobody,” Deitz said, and smiled. “On this one the responsibility spreads in so many directions that it’s invisible. It was an accident. It could have happened in any number of other ways.”
“Some accident,” Stu said, his voice nearly a whisper. “What about the others? Hap and Hank Carmichael and Lila Bruett? Their boy Luke? Monty Sullivan—”
“Classified,” Deitz said. “Going to shake me some more? If it will make you feel better, shake away.”
Stu said nothing, but the way he was looking at Deitz made Deitz suddenly look down and begin to fiddle with the creases of his pants.
“They’re alive,” he said, “and you may see them in time.”
“What about Arnette?”
“Quarantined.”
“Who’s dead there?”
“Nobody.”
“You’re lying.”
“Sorry you think so.”
“When do I get out of here?”
“I don’t know.”
“Classified?” Stu asked bitterly.
“No, just unknown. You don’t seem to have this disease. We want to know why you don’t have it. Then we’re home free.”
“Can I get a shave? I itch.”
Deitz smiled. “If you’ll allow Denninger to start running his tests again, I’ll get an orderly in to shave you right now.”
“I can handle it. I’ve been doing it since I was fifteen.”
Deitz shook his head firmly. “I think not.”
Stu smiled dryly at him. “Afraid I might cut my own throat?”
“Let’s just say—”
Stu interrupted him with a series of harsh, dry coughs. He bent over with the force of them.
The effect on Deitz was galvanic. He was up off the bed like a shot and across to the airlock with his feet seeming not to touch the floor at all. Then he was fumbling in his pocket for the square key and ramming it into the slot.
“Don’t bother,” Stu said mildly. “I was faking.”
Deitz turned to him slowly. Now his face had changed. His lips were thinned with anger, his eyes staring. “You were what?”
“Faking,” Stu said. His smile broadened.
Deitz took two uncertain steps toward him. His fists closed, opened, then closed again. “But why? Why would you want to do something like that?”
“Sorry,” Stu said, smiling. “That’s classified.”
“You shit sonofabitch,” Deitz said with soft wonder.
“Go on. Go on out and tell them they can do their tests.”
He slept better that night than he had since they had brought him here. And he had an extremely vivid dream. He had always dreamed a great deal—his wife had complained about him thrashing and muttering in his sleep—but he had never had a dream like this.
He was standing on a country road, at the precise place where the black hottop gave up to bone-white dirt. A blazing summer sun shone down. On both sides of the road there was green corn, and it stretched away endlessly. There was a sign, but it was dusty and he couldn’t read it. There was the sound of crows, harsh and far away. Closer by, someone was playing an acoustic guitar
